This invention relates to sausage filling apparatus.
The production of sausages at high speed has been carried out for many years, but the increasing demands on food retailers have highlighted a number of drawbacks of existing sausage-making machinery.
One of these drawbacks concerns the appearance of the finished sausage. The high pressures used to force the sausage meat into the sausage casing tend to emulsify fats present in the sausage meat and leave these emulsified fats on the surface, hiding the lean meat content and giving the sausage an unattractive whitish appearance.
Another problem is the degree of accuracy required in production when sausages are sold in fixed-weight packs. If the packs are not to be unacceptably over- or under-weight, very consistent filling of the sausage casing is required during production. A frequent cause of under-weight sausages is the presence of air bubbles trapped in the sausage casing resulting from inconsistent filling.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a sausage filling apparatus which minimises or overcomes these disadvantages.